Anoxic Brain Injury

Inconvenient Truth: Another Al to jeer at.

In John Mauldin's post entitled "Ending the Era of Ponzi Finance", he notes a certain "discomfort among investors and business people everywhere in the world, to whom it is becoming increasingly obvious that "That which cannot be sustained will not be."

I see. So now that it's obvious to business people, we should all sit up and take notice. That Capitalism itself cannot be sustained for the exact same reason, however, should be ignored. That's because what the business people and investors to whom he refers are really concerned about isn't sustainability in the least, but their position on top of the food chain. What is it they fear will topple them from their perch? Why, Government debt. Government debt that, as the article explains, once it grows to more than 90% of GNP, slows the economy down and chokes off the engine of growth.

That sounds reasonable. But, you might ask, isn't the engine of growth itself unsustainable? Isn't the accelerating rate of CO2 production, without which the economies of the world will continue to shrink, unsustainable? Isn't economic growth that's completely dependent on the burning of a depleting energy source, unsustainable? Isn't Capitalism's paradigm, based on increasing population growth until every inch of the planet is overrun by humans and their livestock, unsustainable?

The answer to all of which, as you already know, is yes. But those are all issues that none of those same investors and Business people to whom Mauldin refers, could care a whit, as long as the cash keeps pouring into their investment accounts. But the unsustainable growth in government debt? Well, that's a different story because it threatens them in a way those other minor inconveniences don't.

It betrays an increasing level of desperation when investment newsletters start bandying about terms like sustainability in a Capitalist world that's found no other means of profitability than one that everyone knows is purposely steering the irresistible force of its engine of production into the immovable object of a cement wall of resource scarcity. Hah! Scare City is right, but it's not that that scares them, only the impending calamity of portfolio losses.

Is that too harsh? It may seem to be, but never having occupied the rarefied heights of humanity from where one can peek through the clouds at the creatures below, it hadn't occurred to me that such lofty beings could possibly be concerned about something so mundane, when they have a perspective that should enable them to view a path not taken, a fork up ahead that doesn't take us down the road to destruction, as the one we're on is so obviously heading.

Instead our concerns are, as posted on Facebook by the Atlantic Monthly, "Does It Matter if John Brennan Was Complicit in Illegal Torture?", as they post his picture next to our Assassin-in-Chief, President Obama. So, murdering people, and not being very concerned who is with them at the time, the justification being that if they're in the company of our target, they are just as guilty, since they'll be just as dead, of the same 'crimes', of which neither the target nor his companions have been found guilty, is completely acceptable. But torture? Well, we have to draw the line somewhere.
Sleep deprivation? Unthinkable! Life deprivation? All in a days work.

And as if to slather more icing onto my yellowcake of outrage, which the politics of Empyre (sik) constantly fuel, the person Brennan is in line to replace is, lest we forget, Petraeus, the former CIA director, dismissed, not because he nonchalantly carried out the President's Death wish list, with barely a whisper of protest from the electorate, or the press, for that matter, but because he had sex with someone to whom he wasn't married. Well, for that he must be punished and sent down (not without his generous government pension, of course, as all government pensions are generous, none more so than those going to high-ranking military personnel). Murder? Congrats. Infidelity?  You're fired!

Meanwhle, Al Gore sells Current TV to Al Jazeera and the religious right goes haywire, claiming Al Qaeda is being given a voice on American television, despite the fact that terrorism's only advocate on American TV, as far as my personal witnessing of it, was Pat Robertson, when he called for the assassination of Chavez, the duly elected President of Venezuela, for no crime whatsoever, but simply because he deigned to question the criminal Iraq policies of President Bush.

I know this is more of a rant than a post, but sometimes the incredulity inspired by watching the mental machinations required to maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary for an Empire to maintain the facade of Democracy, reported on by a News media in the hands of the People, (those people being Corporations), lauded by a public boggled by a bewildering array of psychoactive prescription medications can't even be called a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, because it more closely resembles plain old anoxic brain injury.